Thursday, March 19, 2009

Domino, the Ginsu Knife of Servers

Yes you can do everything, like the old Ginsu Knives commercial from the 70's/80s in the US.

Domino it slices it dices it cuts, grates cheese and still it chops firewood like a champion.

Ok, forget the firewood part and the cheese.

So in the spirit of Ginsu, what do you get for your $8,050? To get to this number use this link. Then select the Enterprise Server and then go figure out the PVU's. I used a quad core Dell Intel Edgeserver for this purpose.

Note to IBM, this is lame by now. Just set a price for the server please.

So for 2-4 times the price of your hardware, what do YOU do with it?Mail.

Right, what do you think this is? Microsoft Exchange we can only do 1 thing at a time?

But don't those require a developer? In some cases yes, but there are a number of built in templates for applications already on your client, yes yours, and your server. The server ones are "hidden" but if you know how to find them, and your administrator didn't block you from doing so, go look at them.

Here's a hint, CTRL-N, leave Server as local so it gets created on your pc, give a title and file name, then enter your server name from the drop down list. And find something like a teamroom or a blog or some other template you fancy.

What these are not exciting enough for you? Okay, go to openntf.org and search for what you want, if it isn't there, create a login and post what you are in search of.Not everything in there is ready for prime time, but some of it is really useful and helpful.

Right, so now the customer says, what about indexing and searching the files on the server? No problem, full text indexing is included(the slices) and you can search on the fly through any database(it chops), the first time might be slow while it creates an index, but after it will take seconds.

Microsoft Price: $8,213 for Sharepoint Server with Standard Search 2007 based on this pages requirements, and this pages pricing. Again all from Microsoft.

Now don't forget you still need Groove 2007 (another $4,290 from this site), .Net and some other pieces of the Microsoft puzzle to accomplish what you get in one Domino server.

SQL Server 2008 by the way is another $8,000 or so, based on this search in Google. Because it might help to have a database, any database, run an application.

For more, you can have a limited Domino server which includes Lotus Sametime, a basic instant messaging system, but still, it's included in the price.Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Enterprise Edition: $3,999, from this Microsoft site, additionally plus another server.

In fairness, the Lotus Sametime Server is priced at, sorry the IBM site does NOT show pricing for Sametime Standard or Advanced for an equal comparison.

Microsoft: $24,000 +/- vs.IBM: $8,000 +/-

WAIT, don't forget to include, if you buy into it, hardware costs for all those "extra" services from Microsoft.

Domino wins again. Unfortunately not as seen on TV as much as the Ginsu commercials.